


The Old Man of Peru

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 17:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets bitten by a bat. He probably doesn't get rabies. He probably isn't a werebat, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Man of Peru

**Author's Note:**

> A very late insmallpackages fill for a ficlet with hurt!Sam.
> 
> Slight spoilers through 9.11.

Sam has been scratched and bitten by a lot of things. Ten inch razor claws, poisonous fangs, tentacles with stingers. This is like the creature violence equivalent of a paper cut. It’s hardly even bleeding, but there they are, minute red punctures on Sam’s ear. Dean daubs at them with a gauze pad of disinfectant. 

“I told you to get a damn haircut,” he says, because this is his moment of vindication. “How many times have I told you to get a damn haircut?”

Not all that often, really, because it’s not like Dean doesn’t know Sam won’t listen, but Sam can pick up on Dean thinking it, Dean firmly believes that, and not because of any lingering psychic shit Sam may have. Dean just thinks loud.

The bat had disentangled itself after a few hectic seconds and made its escape. Presumably now it’s flitting about in the sky, doing its batty thing. The bat is not having problems. It’s Dean who is going to be spending his night in the ER because Sam is uptight and paranoid and has stupid hair.

“I can go by myself,” Sam says, for the third time. “For God’s sake, Dean, it’s just a precaution. It’s not like I’m gravely injured. I can drive with my debilitating bat bite.”

“No,” says Dean. “If you’re going, I’m going. Otherwise you’ll be letting bats in the car or some shit.” Sam’s the paranoid one, but Dean’s gone through half their bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the last fifteen minutes and he’ll be easier in his mind if he sees Sam get the shots. Just in case. It’s probably about a million to one odds against someone getting rabies because a bat got into their stupid hair, but this is Sam. It was odds against the demon blood and the stabbing and the Lucifer’s vessel and losing his soul, but that hadn’t stopped Sam. Sam’s a fucking disaster magnet. At least this time there are shots.

Turns out the immune globuwhatthefuckever stuff goes by body weight. Sam has to get four shots of that and one of vaccine. Ouch. Sam says it doesn’t hurt. Dean gets him an ice pack anyway. Sam runs a fever for a day – sweaty and grouchy, like he always is when he’s sick, but it passes – and the follow-ups are just one shot, in three days and then a week and then two weeks after. A nuisance, but no big deal. This wasn’t even a narrow escape. An unusually broad one, really, for them.

Except for how Sam stops sleeping.

Dean doesn’t notice at first. Sam goes through these obsessive phases where he’s in the library at all hours – god knows it’s more homey than that cell Sam calls his room, anyway – and their current case is some freaky shit about a bee curse that’s right up Sam’s alley. When he’s not hunting down supernatural lore he’s lecturing Dean about ecological damage and pesticides and the upcoming bee apocalypse.

But they finish the case, and they have a foul glass or three of mead to celebrate, because Sam got it from some weird honey contact of his and Sam’s Sam, and Dean gets up at three to piss and sees Sam’s door open. The bed is all smooth bedspread and hospital corners and there’s a light in the library.

Sam’s sitting in an armchair, with coffee but no book, frowning and rubbing his arm, the arm where he gets the shots. 

Dean sits in the next chair.

“That bothering you?” he says. Casual. Obviously Sam rubbing his arm does not mean that Sam has rabies, because that wouldn’t even make sense. Maybe he’s having a reaction to the shots, though.

“No,” says Sam, “it’s fine,” and when Dean insists on looking, just to be safe, it _is_ fine, no redness, no heat, no swelling. 

Maybe whatever’s bugging Sam has nothing to do with the damn bat and the stupid aftermath. And maybe Dean is the king of Ruritania.

“You’re not worrying you’re going to start foaming at the mouth and biting me, are you?” Dean asks. “Because, dude, there’s like, less than a 1% chance you’d have gotten sick even without the whole prophylactic shit. And with the prophylactic shit it’s zero chance. 100% effective. You were the one quoting all the statistics at me.”

“I’m not worried,” says Sam. He gets up and carries his cup back toward the kitchen. “I’m going to bed.”

 _Fine_ , thinks Dean, _be that way_. Sam never tells him anything. Sam especially never tells him anything these days. Dean keeps an eye on him the next day. They’re not doing much, just carrying on with inventory. From the dark circles under Sam’s eyes he may have gone to bed but he sure didn’t sleep, but he’s steady and methodical as ever writing his finicky labels, and he drives off in the afternoon to get his day seven shot with no fuss. Only one more, in another week.

But this time when Dean gets up at three it’s on purpose. Sam’s door is closed — he’s a bad liar but he does have a learning curve — and the library’s dark, but sure enough when Dean looks in there’s a dim bulk in the corner armchair. Dean steps softly, because maybe Sam’s fallen asleep, but the sasquatch-sized shadow shifts with a faint gleam of eyes.

Dean stumbles his way to Sam’s corner. There isn’t another chair there, so Dean sits on the floor, back to the wall, stretching his legs out carefully to make it clear he’s staying. Maybe once Dean would have dragged Sam back to his room and fucked some sense into him, at least got him tired, but that’s sure not an option now. Sam gives an irritated sigh, but doesn’t say anything. Maybe if Dean tries to wait out the silent game Sam will fall asleep. Or Dean will. And if he falls asleep here he’s going to end up with a painful crick in his neck.

“So,” says Dean brilliantly. Sam grunts. 

“So,” Dean tries again “you haven’t lost your soul again.” Dean has spent enough time in the last week watching Sam peer fondly at bees to be certain of that. “And we’ve established that rabies is not on your freaky mind. So either we tackle the insomnia thing by me cutting off your coffee —and I think we both know that would get ugly fast —, or I sit here on the floor while my ass goes numb and throw out guesses till you punch me, or you just fucking tell me. Case you’re wondering, I vote option C.”

Sam stays silent. Of course, Dean thinks, it doesn’t have to be rabies. Maybe the bat was a werebat. Maybe Sam can sense the changes and he doesn’t know how to tell Dean, so he’s staying up nights fighting the urge to eat mosquitoes and navigate by supersonic squeaks. Which could actually be useful, so Dean can’t see why Sam won’t just come out with it. 

“If it’s some werebat thing . . .” Dean begins, and then stops, because Sam just kicked over the coffee table. 

“It was a joke, Sam, for fuck’s sake,” says Dean, because it mostly was. “You don’t have to go oversensitive about werebats. Not that I’m complaining about you taking it out on the coffee table instead of me, mind.”

When Sam pulls him up off the floor and pins him against the wall with a forearm across his chest, Dean’s willing to admit that he may have provoked it. Though he’s still not sure exactly how.

“Don’t fucking joke about this,” says Sam. “You are the last person gets to joke about this. The absolute last person.” He lets go of Dean. “I’m going to bed,” he says, and a few moments later Dean hears his door shut with a final snick. 

Well, fuck. Maybe Sam _is_ a werebat. Dean had thought they were getting off lightly with the rabies thing. He might have expected something like this.

He does some research. Because it’s not that he really believes it, but there’s a buried, misgiving part of his mind that can’t be sure. And werebat-Sam wouldn’t be tearing anyone’s heart out, presumably, unless he’s a giant, Sam-sized, Dracula thing, but Dean can imagine him slipping away, out through some damn crack in wherever they lock him up, flitting anonymously about the sky with all the other bats, and what if he changes back before he’s gone to roost or perch or whatever the hell bats do? What if he falls?

The moon will be full in ten days. Most of what the Men of Letters has on were stuff that sounds promising will only work before the first transformation. Dean gets short on sleep himself, though he’s still doing better than Sam. Sam stays in his room at night with the door firmly closed and the bed is messed in the morning, but he’s looking bad, seedy and shaky, and the rings under his eyes have rings. By mutual, unspoken agreement they don’t go looking for another case. Dean keeps expecting Sam to ask him what he’s working on, but he doesn’t. Maybe he knows. He’s not doing any research himself, though. He’s reading the Oz books, all of them, one after another. Part of this goddamn resignation thing he’s got going these days, maybe. Sam’s just waiting to fall out of the sky some night. Waiting to hit the ground.

Or, you know, maybe Dean is just going crazy. Because no, of course Sam isn’t a werebat. And yes, Dean could just ask him, so why the fuck doesn’t he? Just because it didn’t go so well last time doesn’t mean Dean shouldn’t try take two. And if Dean really believed this shit, this isn’t how he’d be handling it, right? This is some weird hypothetical thing, or else he’d be shaking Sam like a dog with a chew toy, banging his head against the wall, anything to get him to wake up, hold on, _do something_ , engage. At the very least, if Dean really bought his own stupid idea, he’d be down in the vaults building some kind of bat hutch.

Only Dean maybe lost the right to stop Sam dying when he stopped Sam dying. He doesn’t want to think about that one.

Now, though, now it’s three days before the full moon, and Sam’s got to drive into town for his last shot. He’s got to leave in half an hour, but he’s staring down at where he just poured boiling water over his arm instead of into his cup. For a moment he and Dean are both frozen, waiting together for the pain to hit. Then Dean’s shoving Sam into the chair and filling their largest bowl with cool — not too cold, he remembers, tepid cool — water and pushing Sam’s arm under, and getting scissors to cut the flannel off, because he knows better than to just yank cloth off a scald. 

“It’s too bad this isn’t McDonalds,” says Sam, “I could sue. Make my fortune.” He’s staring into the water at his arm, gross soggy white and pink and some broken skin where even cutting the sleeve wasn’t careful enough. His face is white and beaded with sweat but perfectly calm.

“ _Goddammit_ , Sam,” says Dean. He’s an inch away from smashing Sam’s face in. He goes for the car keys instead. At least Sam was going to the hospital today anyway. 

The doctors show a tendency to send Dean to wait in the hall and ask Sam questions, but Sam sticks to “accident” and “fine” and “been busy with work, just a bit tired” and eventually they treat the scald and give him his last shot and let him go. For a miracle the stuff they gave Sam for the pain actually knocks him out, and he sleeps in the car the whole way home. Dean just leaves him there when he parks. Sam might be more comfortable in bed than in the passenger seat, but Dean’s not placing any bets that once he wakes up he won’t be back in insomnia mode. 

Dean gets out his books and gets back to work. It’s two and a half days until the full moon, and Sam will have an injured wing, now, if he turns. Which might make it easier to contain him, but if Sam can still fly but he’s hurt . . . that could be bad. Though of course the whole werebat thing is ridiculous. But Dean hauls up one of the big wooden crates from the storerooms downstairs and starts checking it over, making sure there aren’t cracks. There are a a couple of knotholes that will work as airholes. Dean can get some screen, strong stuff, double layered, and cover them. Frame them with board, nailed down, so they’ll be secure. 

It’s almost two hours before Sam walks in from the garage.

“What’s with the carpentry project?” he asks. 

Maybe it’s how Sam looks like ten miles of bad highway or maybe it’s just that nailing down screen with boards is fucking irritating, but Dean snaps.

“I’m building it for you, OK?” he says. “And you don’t have to say thank you and you don’t have to like it and you don’t even have to use it, Sam, I’m not going to force you, but if I haven’t just gone crazy with this werebat thing, if that’s really what’s happening to you, this is going to be here. It’s going to be right fucking here.”

The incredulous look on Sam’s face is definitely a vote for _Dean’s gone crazy_.

“You were serious with that werebat shit?” he says. “It wasn’t just one of your oh-so-tasteful jokes? I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it. You’ve actually made up your mind I’m some freaking _werebat_ and you’re building me a, a hutch. Jesus fucking Christ, Dean. Where do you get this stuff? Where do you get off with this stuff?”

“I don’t know, Sam,” says Dean, “you tell me. You’re the one who stopped sleeping since you got bit. You’re the one who’s so fucking tired you’re pouring boiling water on yourself. So, yeah, I looked into it. I don’t know what the hell is going on in your head. God knows you won’t give me a clue. But if you’re going to turn into a goddamn bat at the full moon there’s going to be a hutch. So don’t think you get to flit away in bat form and die just to prove that you can, or just because you think you should, or just because you’re pissed at me. Even if it’s just some crazy idea I got stuck in my head, don’t you ever fucking think that.” 

Sam brings his good fist down on the crate with a crack. 

“Stop,” he shouts. “Just stop. Stop fixing things. Don’t put angels in me. Don’t get Marks of Cain. Don’t build me bat hutches. Just fucking stop. Jesus, Dean.” Sam's voice cracks and breaks off. He gulps air like he’s been running, like he’s going to laugh, or cry. He sits down on the couch instead, pinches the bridge of his nose in the fingers of his good hand. “You’re right,” he says, quietly now. “You don’t have the faintest fucking idea what’s going on in my head.”

Dean puts down his hammer and leans against the crate.

“Then tell me,” he says, and waits. It’s so quiet he can hear the clock tick in the kitchen and Sam breathing. 

“I don’t have rabies,” Sam says after a bit. He’s hoarse, but he’s speaking quick and easy, almost conversational. “I know I don’t. I got the shots. Or, well, I guess I don’t completely know — it’s not as if they’ve ever tested how the rabies virus interacts with demon blood, or whatever subcellular shit I’ve got left from the Trials, but I do know. I mean, the risk was tiny, even without the shots. So it’s not like I’m staying up nights thinking there’s something wrong with me, something in my body. Thinking I’ve been infected, that it got in, and that it’s a thing, that if I’m off my guard, it’s going to come out, do something, change me. That’s not even how rabies works, not really. It’s just a disease, not some thing with its own agenda. It’s not like I’m thinking any of that. I’m not the old man of Peru.”

“The what?” says Dean.

Sam snorts humorlessly. “It’s a limerick,” he says. “ _There was an old man of Peru,/Who dreamed he was eating his shoe./He woke in the night/In a terrible fright/And found it was perfectly true._ That’s not the story of my life or anything. So it would be stupid, wouldn't it, if that were why I wasn't sleeping.”

There’s nothing to say to that. And Dean is not the person who can say it. He sits down beside Sam instead, waits until his shoulders relax a bit, till he swipes angrily at his eyes.

“You don’t have rabies,” says Dean at last. “You got the shots. There’s nothing wrong with you, Sam. Nothing beyond a scald and a low IQ and a sleep deficit. You’re not the old man of Peru.”

“I know that,” says Sam. He settles his head back against the couch, stretches out his legs. Dean’s sitting closer than Sam usually lets him get these days, close enough to feel his warmth, close enough to see the faint twitch at the corner of his eye, but Sam doesn’t move away. “And I’m not a werebat. You can set your mind at rest.”

“I know,” says Dean. He does. He did, really, all along. The hutch was just a precaution. 

Sam shuts his eyes. Dean wonders if he’s falling asleep, if this time he should get him to move to his bed, but the corners of Sam’s mouth are twitching up.

“You really thought I was?” he says. “Really, Dean? Are there even werebats?”

“It was a possibility,” says Dean. Maybe he sounds defensive. But Sam’s honest to god smiling. He looks awful, exhausted, arm a white mass of bandage, face pinched with pain, but he’s smiling.

“You were really building me a hutch,” Sam goes on, “a goddamn _hutch_. You were building it out of a box.”

“A crate,” says Dean. A crate is significantly more dignified than a box.

“A crate,” Sam repeats. “Yeah, that helps. I feel better knowing it was a crate. You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” And he pulls Dean’s head down and kisses him, a quick, dry press of his lips. Nothing like it used to be.

Then he lets go. Dean’s heart is pounding painfully.

“Don’t build me hutches,” Sam says. “I’m going to bed.” He stands and walks off. 

Nothing’s changed, not really. They’re not back to anything. Dean may be stupid enough to think his brother’s a werebat, but he’s smart enough to know they’re still a long way from anything changing. But when he walks by Sam’s door a bit later it’s open, and when he pokes his head in Sam’s asleep.


End file.
